The Rape of Don Draper

José, a reader, sent me a link to an article about a recent episode of Mad Men. The episode featured a flashback of Dan Draper as a boy. During the flashback, Draper is nursed back to health by a prostitute. Once he is well, or close to being so, she rapes him. As it is described in the Atlantic article:

Throughout most of the episode, Aimee serves as a surrogate mother for Dick; she lets him recuperate in her bed and offers him rest, comforting words, spoonfuls of warm broth. However, in their penultimate scene together, Aimee’s maternal kindness turns oddly predatory. She approaches her bed where Dick is lying weakly, fever newly broken, and asks, “Don’t you want to know what all the fuss is about? “No,” Dick replies forcefully, averting his eyes and hugging the blankets tightly against his chest as she reaches under the covers to touch him. “Stop it,” he says, clearly uncomfortable, even afraid. But Aimee doesn’t stop.

The author, Abigail Rine, points out that the episode did not receive the same response a recent Girls episode did when that show featured a “this may be rape” scene. That episode sparked numerous discussions among feminists, progressives, and pop culture analysts. The Mad Men episode spawned criticism for a rape joke told earlier in the show and a few pat-on-the-back comments.

When child rape isn’t rape

In some countries, rape laws are worded in a way that makes it impossible to charge a woman with rape even when the victim is a child. For example:

An 11-year-old New Zealand boy was reported Saturday to have fathered a child with the 36-year-old mother of a school friend, raising questions on why women cannot be charged with rape in the country.

Counsellors working in the area of child sexual abuse said the case highlighted a lack of attention to women as potential offenders, according to the New Zealand Herald, which reported the story.

The case has also prompted an examination of the law, under which the crime of rape applies only to men.

As the article later states:

Under New Zealand law, the crime of rape applies only to men and carries a maximum jail sentence of 20 years.

Women who force a male to have sex face a charge of sexual violation which carries a maximum 14-year sentence.

Not only can women not be charged with rape no matter how violent the act, but they do not even face the same potential sentence if convicted.

And just in case people this was a harmless act, here is what allegedly occurred:

Bulletin Board v193

2010 study found problems with state sex predator program — An outside 2010 evaluation of the Tennessee Department of Correction’s program to prevent inmates from getting raped by other inmates or staff members found the program was ineffective. That’s the same program that a 34-year-old rapist was enrolled in as an inmate classified as a high-risk sexual predator. A year after his release, he raped a teen and killed his wife on a single day. “One of my biggest of criticisms of the program was it was just an educational program.

Abuse victim angered by Pell’s claim — A MAN who was sexually abused as a boy by Catholic brothers says it is “beyond belief” that Cardinal George Pell was unaware of abuse by clergy over many years. Cardinal Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic, admitted to Victoria’s child sex abuse inquiry that a fear of scandal had led to cover-ups of child sex abuse in the church. He was “absolutely sorry” for what had happened, but he had never personally covered up clergy abuse, he told the inquiry in Melbourne on Monday.

Dartmouth man tells trial about childhood sex abuse — A Dartmouth man says he was molested as a child about 30 years ago by a man he knew through a volunteer agency. Gerald Gates Smith, 60, is on trial in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax on charges of indecent assault on a male, committing an act of gross indecency and sexual assault. The offences are alleged to have been committed in Dartmouth in the early 1980s, while Smith volunteered with an agency that provides mentors for children.

Julie Hermann, Rutgers Athletic Director, Accused Of Abuse — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie plans to speak with Rutgers officials about a report that the athletic director hired to clean up the school’s scandal-scarred program quit as Tennessee’s women’s volleyball coach 16 years ago after her players complained she ruled through humiliation, fear and emotional abuse. Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak says the governor is aware of the report about Julie Hermann in The Star-Ledger of Newark, but wants to get more details before commenting.

Rape Behind Bars — A new federal report shows that the nation’s prisons and jails have a long way to go before they comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act. That 2003 law requires institutions receiving federal money to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on rape and to embrace rigorous prevention measures like those outlined last year by the Justice Department. The report, released this month by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, makes clear that prisons and other correctional institutions are falling well short of the law’s requirement to address this kind of abuse.

Women using rape laws for vengeance, Delhi high court says — For the third time in less than a week, the Delhi high court has decried that rape laws are often misused by women. Flagging the issue in a judgment on Saturday, Justice Kailash Gambhir said rape cases are being used as “a weapon for vengeance and vendetta” to harass and even force a boy to marry. While granting anticipatory bail to a man facing rape charges from a woman claiming to be his wife, HC added that in many cases woman first has consensual sex but later files rape case against her boyfriend when the relationship breaks up in order to force him to get married, making not only “mockery” of the marriage but also inflating the statistics of rape cases.

A Dose of Stupid v89

It happens every day. In fact, it is pretty hard to avoid it. There are some things that can only be understood with a slap on the forehead. Things so mind-boggling that one wonders how humans managed to evolve thumbs while being this mentally inept. Case in point:

This thing about male victims

What happens when one is a radical feminist and reads an article showing that men experience more domestic violence than one assumes? Does one challenge those radical feminist views? Does one rethink her understanding of domestic violence? Or does one try to disprove the statistics by playing semantics?

Karen Ingala Smith decided to go the latter route. She attempted to dismiss the finding of the British Crime Survey, a survey that showed a higher than expected rate of domestic violence against men. She got the ultimate smackdown from one of the professionals cited in the above article, but that did not deter Smith. She chose instead to list her problem with the notion that one in three domestic violence victims is male.

Let us break down her arguments point by point:

Bulletin Board v191

Boy Scouts agree to release ‘perversion files’ — The Boy Scouts of America said Thursday it will release to attorneys 10 years of confidential files it uses to keep pedophile suspects from becoming troop leaders or volunteers. The decision comes after the 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio denied an appeal from the BSA to keep the files sealed. “Youth protection is of paramount importance to the Boy Scouts of America,” BSA spokesman Deron Smith said in an email. “We are thankful the court reviewed this matter and will comply with its order.”

Discrimination against men? — Recent Virgin airlines passenger, John McGirr claims Virgin airlines treated him like a sexual predator on a flight to Sydney. He claims a flight attendant asked him to move saying he was not allowed to sit next to children because he was male. According to Mr McGirr the flight attendant walked up the aisle and tried to find a female to swap seats with him. “By that time, people had looked around and it was like I’d done something wrong, (I felt) defenceless.

Ex-Scout leader admits sexual abuse of boys — Henry Calder, 60, who had been in a position of responsibility in the Scout Association for about 40 years, had taken videos between 1982 and 1991 at camps organised by the movement. He had also been an employee in the finance department at East Dunbartonshire Council until his retirement in 2010. Calder, of Kirkintilloch, was arrested in a raid organised under the auspices of Operation Alba, which targeted people who downloaded child pornography on the internet.

Jodi Arias convicted of first-degree murder

On May 8, 2013, a jury convicted Jodi Arias of one count of first-degree murder against Travis Alexander. Arias stabbed Alexander 29 times, slit his throat, and shot him in the face.

The conviction ended a five-year wait for justice for the Alexander family. Arias played everyone, starting with the family. Initially, Arias pretended to know nothing about the crime. She called Alexander’s phone and left him an email shortly after she killed him. She wrote about his death in her diary. She even went to his funeral.

There was some concern that Arias might walk. Arias is impressively manipulative. Specifically, she is passive aggressive. Her ability to play the victim is so developed that she conned two experts into believing her story. Arias also appears to be a sociopath. She seems to lack any empathy for anyone, and appears to always look for the best angle to control someone. When that does not work, she plays the passive aggressive card, presenting herself as a victim to try to win the person over. She tried this at trial on prosecutor Juan Martinez only to have him throw it back in her face.

That alone would have been enough to ensure a conviction because while Arias is quite manipulative, she is not great at it. She is good, but her style takes time. She is not good at conning people on the fly, and when she tries, her lies are obvious.

However, the details of the case were the most damning.

Zimbabwe Police Concerned About Rape Against Males

Recently, two women and one man allegedly kidnapped and raped a 25-year-old soldier. They reportedly held him for four days, sexually assaulting him multiple times:

Assistant police spokesman Assistant Inspector Muzondiwa Clean told the NewsDay news organisation that at around midnight on April 1, the soldier willingly accepted a lift into Mutare in a Mercedes Benz vehicle from the Birchenough Bridge business centre. [...] The soldier was allegedly threatened with a knife by the driver when he asked to be dropped off instead of travelling for food, and one of the female passengers blindfolded him shortly afterwards. Assistant Inspector Clean said the soldier was then taken to a house in an unknown location, where he was stripped naked and robbed of his mobile phone and $35. he solider claims he was sexually abused by the women on numerous occasions at the house, before the group drove him into the remote Dangamvura Mountains.

Afterward, the group stoned him, resulting in an injury to his foot. The soldier eventually made his way to the police and reported the incident.